3 ms·

English would save more - as it would require a much smaller education budget and most of the infrastructure is in place already.

by bdfh42 15y ago

mhd 15y ago
For the sake of the argument, I'll assume that it's actually possible (and desirable) to unify languages in Europe. A lot of the infrastructure could be used for any kind of language at all, as long as you've got text books. If Esperanto really would be an order of magnitude easier to learn, than that alone would make it much cheaper. You might have some initial expenses, but you'll make up for them soon enough. It also has the additional advantage of not being tied to a particular country. You won't get a whole country's support for free, but you won't hear people cry about cultural imperialism. But yeah, this isn't exactly new. A lot of these arguments were in existence when Esperanto was invented over a hundred years ago. Not much came from it.
- bdfh42 15y ago
  The key point surely is that English is a living language that is adapting constantly to reflect a world culture as it develops. Plus there is a great body of existing English speakers in Europe matched by qualified teachers in most secondary schools. There might be cultural objections in parts of Europe to adopting the language of another country but in reality - English is already the dominant business language. Having said all of that it would be sad if other European languages were not maintained - you can say things in (for example) French that you just can't say in English - well not without a lot more words and it still would not be quite right. French is the second language of our family but I am sure this is true for all other languages.
  - mhd 15y ago
    And a while back, French was the language of international diplomacy, Latin the language of science and mathematics, Italian for music. An argument could be made for all of them. Probably even for German, as it has a lot of native speakers in Europe. I don't think anything will remove English from its throne as the de facto "lingua franca", but I think the chance of making it a true, unified de jure version is about as unlikely as seeing Esperanto seated there. And I don't quite get the "key point". We're not talking about Latin here, updating Esperanto shouldn't pose a problem. Although it's more likely to be in the French style, with a central committee.

English would save more - as it would require a much smaller education budget and most of the infrastructure is in place already.

by bdfh42 15y ago

English would save more - as it would require a much smaller education budget and most of the infrastructure is in place already.

mhd 15y ago

For the sake of the argument, I'll assume that it's actually possible (and desirable) to unify languages in Europe. A lot of the infrastructure could be used for any kind of language at all, as long as you've got text books. If Esperanto really would be an order of magnitude easier to learn, than that alone would make it much cheaper. You might have some initial expenses, but you'll make up for them soon enough. It also has the additional advantage of not being tied to a particular country. You won't get a whole country's support for free, but you won't hear people cry about cultural imperialism. But yeah, this isn't exactly new. A lot of these arguments were in existence when Esperanto was invented over a hundred years ago. Not much came from it.

bdfh42 15y ago
The key point surely is that English is a living language that is adapting constantly to reflect a world culture as it develops. Plus there is a great body of existing English speakers in Europe matched by qualified teachers in most secondary schools. There might be cultural objections in parts of Europe to adopting the language of another country but in reality - English is already the dominant business language. Having said all of that it would be sad if other European languages were not maintained - you can say things in (for example) French that you just can't say in English - well not without a lot more words and it still would not be quite right. French is the second language of our family but I am sure this is true for all other languages.
- mhd 15y ago
  And a while back, French was the language of international diplomacy, Latin the language of science and mathematics, Italian for music. An argument could be made for all of them. Probably even for German, as it has a lot of native speakers in Europe. I don't think anything will remove English from its throne as the de facto "lingua franca", but I think the chance of making it a true, unified de jure version is about as unlikely as seeing Esperanto seated there. And I don't quite get the "key point". We're not talking about Latin here, updating Esperanto shouldn't pose a problem. Although it's more likely to be in the French style, with a central committee.